Are you interested in Compensation and Benefits in Africa? If you are nearby to Johannesburg, you should plan to attend the Employer Roundtable sponsored by Birches Group, Emergence Growth and Aon Hewitt on February 7, 2013.

The event will be held at Aon Hewitt South Africa offices in Sandton. You must register in order to attend. Click here for more information and to reserve your seat.

Organizations operating in dozens of international locations have a lot of work to do to maintain separate salary scales in each country. Every once in a while a client suggests they are considering using just one scale for all their countries globally, or in a region. Then they ask me what I think. I tell them it’s a bad idea.

Working as an international HR professional is a challenge in so many ways. How can you best prepare for success in your role? Here are some tips which I refer to (with apologies to the late Dr. Steven Covey) as the “Seven Characteristics of Highly Effective International HR Professionals.” Continue reading →

The tax cost of an international assignment can be significant and companies struggle to find ways to manage these costs. This article outlines two straightforward strategies for reducing the tax costs of your expatriate program.

Where do those excess taxes come from anyway?Excess tax costs associated with an international assignment include the actual taxes paid by the employer on behalf of the employee which exceed the employee’s tax burden as calculated under the company’s tax equalization policy. But don’t worry. There are a variety of tax planning techniques that can reduce these excess tax costs. Two common ones are:

Calling all compensation professionals! OK, some of you prefer the term “comp geek” but either way, I want to share a great resource.

Recently, I discovered a great new website called XLCalibre. It’s hosted by a chap in the north of England, who prefers to keep his identity a secret for now. I can confirm, however, that the author is male, hence I shall continue to use the male gender for references to him. Continue reading →

If you work in international HR, you know how important market data is for the management of your international operations. Finding reliable data in all of your countries is undoubtedly a challenge. Each country has different survey suppliers, different employers participating in the surveys, and variable levels of quality. So naturally, when you find a survey you trust, the tendency is to stick with it. But is one survey enough? I don’t think so.

When individuals relocate, they are bombarded with many changes at once. You may hear the phrase: So much to do, so little time. They may be tempted to skip part or all of the relocation process. Here we’ll discuss three questions related to orientation meetings.

Why do we need to provide international assignees with orientation meetings?

What should be covered during the orientation meetings with an international assignee?

When should this information be provided to the international assignee?

This is the second part of a five-part series, where we present checklists to help international HR professionals plan and manage long-term international assignments. There are five stages we identified for long-term assignment management:

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In part one of this series, we looked at candidate assessment, selection and approval. In this installment, we will examine Assignment Planning.

If you are an international HR practitioner, then you have probably had to deal with long-term international assignments. They can be complex, with many different people involved, both internal resources and external suppliers and vendors.

One of the best ways to ensure all the necessary steps are followed is to use checklists. These are simple yet extremely useful devices that will help you stay on track with your international assignees. A recommended approach is to develop a checklist for each of the common assignment stages or events that occur, including: